Coming Home

I reached out to my friend Alicia when planning our trip.  I asked her about good places to stay in Pennsylvania, only to find out that they've moved to Ohio!  She said we were welcome to stay with them and once I knew she was only a few hours from Michigan, I knew we had to make the stop.  We had lunch with her family and the kids were able to play for a couple of hours and stretch out their legs.  They don't look too excited, but they really did have fun playing. 

Eli, Alison, Nico and Isa

 If you look back far enough on this blog, you'll find Alicia in posts.  We did a preschool co-op with Alison and Nico when Eli and Isa were just babies.  Now Alicia is giving me long distance help with how to teach rambunctious boys and encouraging me through deployment.  Her husband deployed while they lived here and she came over once a week for dinner.  I didn't understand then what opening our doors meant to her, but she has spoken of it often.  Honestly, I felt selfish because her husband being gone meant I got more time with her, but now I see how valuable it is to have a friend cook dinner for you when your plate is full.

I look tired, but it was so refreshing to spend time with this family.

I had many raised eyebrows when I spoke of driving my kids to Michigan in a small car; questions of them getting along in such close quarters.  But our kids did fantastic.  They helped each other turn on movies and get snacks and somehow there wasn't any fighting.  They were actually encouraging and often saying, "That actually didn't seem so long."  It was exciting for me to drive through new territory.  Pennsylvania was my favorite.  It was slightly scary how much faith I put in my little pink phone.  But thanks to Ben's fancy shmancy car, I just put the address in my phone, plugged the phone into the car and it told me where to go.  Beautiful.  

We stayed in West Virginia on the way home.  My handy dandy phone got us there just fine.  However, the phone did not tell me that parking at the hotel was a disaster!  There were just a few parking spaces in front of the hotel, which were full and the parking garage required a room key...but I couldn't get a key because I couldn't park to go inside and get my key!  After circling the hotel a few times, I found a public parking garage.  The attendant told me to drive to the 3rd floor and there would be a bridge to the hotel parking.  No offense, but they must have been smoking something because there was no bridge.  I ended up just parking there and shoving our pj's into a backpack and set out to walk over to the hotel.  But then the worst part came.  The only way out of the garage was straight into a mall!  We wondered the mall for awhile, looking for a way out and for a bathroom and maybe some food and I felt like I was stuck in the labyrinth with 3 small kids following me.  We learned a big lesson in taking things one at a time and eventually got to the hotel.

We ordered room service and watched movies and I didn't even care about the insane amount of money I spent on grilled cheese sandwiches or the fact that the kids were up WAY past bedtime.

We finished the drive the next day and drove through the beautiful mountains.  Several times during the trip, I made the kids put down all electronics and just soak in what we were driving through.  This was a picture Alison took during one of those times.  Eli thought there were entirely too many trees and said, "Why are there so many trees?!  Someone needs to come cut some down!"...and that my friends, may be the first sign that he is playing too much Minecraft.

Coming home was rough.  I walked into the house to find this:

A big giant hole in the ceiling of our living room.  

Plus my shower was in complete disarray and the outside freezer door was open and water was leaking all over the garage.  Did I mention we are having a difficult time with our rental company?  I told them to fix the house stuff while I was gone and came home to a giant hole that was just left open.  Awesome sauce.  I almost got in the car and left again, but they say you should face your problems and not run away.

It was great spending so much time with friends and to see big giant smiles on my kids faces.  I learned some valuable traveling tips for our upcoming cross-country move and most of all, I'm just really proud of us for making the trip.